Rotten foods impounded in Arusha #tanzania

TANZANIA Food and Drugs Authority (TFDA) has
impounded a shipping container full of rotten beef and
pancakes for alleged distribution to various high-class
hotels in Arusha city.
The consignment comprised many packs of the local
'pancakes' known as 'Chapatis' molded and packed in Dar
es Salaam were all found to be long past their sell-by
dates.
There were also rotten canned beef and fish products from
Kenya under the 'Alpha Foods Limited' of Nairobi through
their Arusha-based agent, Fine Foods Limited.
TFDA Northern Zone Manager, Damas Matiku, said that the
authority received reports from local residents at Themi
Hills, in Njiro, regarding the presence of a storage container
with suspicious food products about to be dispatched to
various hotels in the city.
He named the container contents to be twelve (12) cartons
of packed beef, 44 cartons of lamb meat, 12 cartons of
packed Tilapia fillets and nearly 100 cartons of chapatis
(pancakes) all being expired products, some already going
bad.
"The food products had labels indicating that the time of
usage had expired since last March, but the owners
somehow continued to store the food and in fact were in the
process of shunting it into local hotels and restaurants here
through dubious arrangements," said Mr Matiku.
He said the total value for the consignment reached 10
million/- and warned that, some of the products must
already have been sold to various outlets, especially high-
class hotels in Arusha, thus people should take care.
The TFDA also impounded a series of counterfeit product
labels that the culprits probably planned to fix onto the
expired products so as to fool their customers.
"The idea of holding those product labels alone is a serious
crime in itself because it is only the manufacturers who
reserve the rights to own their product labels and badges,
these racketeers probably printed the branding elsewhere,"
said the TFDA Manager.